Saturday, September 4, 2010

When I was running errands today, the odometer on the Land Rover crossed over into uncharted territory. I've driven the car 100,000 miles. I've never kept a car this long before. In the past, I've typically traded my cars in on something new before they reached 40,000 miles. Times have changed though. The heady days when I thought it was necessary for some inexplicable reason to own three cars at the same time are long gone. Cars are more expensive now. I don't drive as much as I used to. And perhaps most importantly, I really like this car. After all these years, the Defender 90 is still cool. Even if I could afford something new, I'm not sure what could replace this iconic piece of machinery. I just wish I was as good at picking stocks as I seem to be at picking cars. Every car I've ever owned was worth more when I sold it than when it was new. Strangers still walk up to me in parking lots and want to buy the Defender. These cars have become quite desirable, but sadly vehicles like this are no longer imported into the United States. No airbags. Isn't that silly? Why would you even want airbags in an off-road vehicle anyway?

I got all sorts of minor technical issues resolved today. Yesterday's lost website has been found. Someone just moved the DNS to a server that didn't exist. All I need to do now is point the DNS to the correct servers and the site will reappear again. I was dreading getting this problem resolved, because it involved a call to GoDaddy tech support. I'll have to give credit where credit is due however. Even though they still don't have a toll-free support line, GoDaddy tech support is much better than it was this time last year. They were courteous and surprisingly helpful.

I also figured out why the nifty little PetCam app I got for my iPhone wasn't working. It was a firewall problem. It's always a firewall problem! The firewall wasn't letting the signal from the camera watching the dogs out to the Internet so I could see it on the iPhone. I never used to have firewall problems when I had a static IP address and connected to the Internet through a DSL line. You could always put things like web servers and cameras ahead of the firewall. Now that I've switched the office to a wireless network, firewalls are a continual hassle. Firewalls just don't play nice with things like Skype, web cams or games.

Dash apparently didn't play nice with Dot out in the yard last night either. He is a lot younger than Dot and sometimes he plays too rough. Dot must have strained a muscle when she was racing around with Dash because she was limping a bit this morning. By the end of the day she was fine again, but it reminded me that she is no longer a young dog. I really wish that dogs lived longer. We have way too many little urns sitting on the coffee table already.

About Me

John Sealander received a Bachelor of Architecture and a BA in Art from
The University of Arkansas. His rich and diverse experience includes
working as an architectural designer for Fred Bassetti in Seattle,
producing documentary films for PBS, shooting commercial photography
for True Redd’s “Great Shooting Gallery” in Dallas and teaching writing
courses at SMU’s Academy of Visual Communication. For over 35 years,
John has developed memorable and award winning ads and images for some
of the world’s leading ad agencies and most popular brands. In 1990 he
started Sealander & Company, the Dallas, Texas based production
company and multi-media agency where he continues to develop his ideas
today.